Dang is going to have 65,535 karma points soon

And? Where does that get you?

It is a pointless number in a database collected over decades that gains nothing. Even if anyone here got 69,420 karma points, it is still point-less.

69,420 Dogecoins would still be worth more than 69,420 HN karma points or even 374,000 HN karma points.

65,535 is a more interesting number than 69,420 as it is the maximum value of an unsigned 16-bit integer. It’s quite common for computer systems to display very odd behavior when a slowly-incrementing number eventually reaches the maximum value and overflows. While it’s unlikely that HN uses unsigned 16-bit integers to represent karma, it is true that higher karma values unlock more capabilities on HackerNews like the ability to upvote or downvote - this is enough to appeal to our sense of humour and get us imagining that some strange capability will be unlocked at 16 bit unsigned int overflow.

Putting aside the overflow, if you got HN to pick three arbitrary karma milestones without communicating, they would probably coordinate on the 8bit, 16bit, and 32bit unsigned int maxes. Dang is the sole moderator for HackerNews and does amazing work in this role, so this karma milestone (while meaningless and worthless in itself) functions as a Schelling point to celebrate the effort he’s put in over the years and how much we appreciate his stewardship of the site.